10/16/2025
Day Sixteen - Favorite Recent Halloween Costumes.
Day Sixteen - Favorite Recent Halloween Costumes.
As children we got to dress up in a variety of costumes from monsters to superheroes to movie characters to other things. We would take on many personas and became our favorite characters. We would go around as these characters and go door to door and show off our costumes to our friends and to those who lived in our neighborhoods. As we get older, we were encouraged to stop dressing up or I was when I was a teen but I’ve come to notice things have changed over the years. Cosplaying became more and more mainstream and adults dressing up in costumes became a more regular thing and as the years went by, I would do the same. So for today’s theme I’ll be talking about my favorite costumes I’ve done in recent years. Some I’ll be very creative with and others I’ll get my awesome costume from an online store.
To start off we go back to Halloween 2015, one of my siblings was hosting a Halloween Party at their house and I was trying to come up with a last minute costume idea. Originally I was going to get a Halloween mask from a grocery store and become an Alien but then a creative brainstorm hit me. I looked around in my parent’s closet, found my Dad’s old suit jacket and tie, grabbed my favorite shirt and I did become an alien but it was my favorite alien of all, Superman! Specifically I went as Clark Kent but my Superman shirt was under the suit jacket and it was visible. I got the idea based off of one of my favorite shots of Superman drawn by Gary Frank and used it for reference and I even did one of the iconic poses while in costume too. I really liked the way the costume turned out and because of it, I came up with my own concept of low budgeted cosplays. Easy cosplays that don’t cost a lot of money and you can flex your creativity skills. Speaking of which, this leads me to the next costume I came up with:
So for those who don’t know, while I like my superheroes and giant monsters a lot, I also REALLY like my Pulp Heroes and all 3 subjects are how I actually got not only the ideas for this page but the name itself. A Pulp Hero is usually defined as a character who predates the first appearance of Superman and serve as the prototype for the superhero genre as characters who appear heroic but have no real super feats or powers with some rare exceptions. Another key trait for a pulp hero is in addition to predating Superman, most would make their appearances in books or what is known as a Pulp Magazine. A Pulp Magazine is basically a Magazine that features a number of stories, with some being short where as others could almost be novel like in length and they would cover a wide variety of subjects from Adventures to Science Fiction to Horror to Mysteries and to fantasy along with other genres. Examples of characters who’ve appeared in Pulp Magazines/Novels would include Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Conan The Barbarian, Zorro, and many others. We would also get some pulp characters appearing in comic strips too such as Lee Falk’s The Phantom and Mandrake The Magician.
Now another medium in which some Pulp heroes would appear in would be on the radio. We would get a variety of Radio Shows back then as television didn’t exist yet and when it was eventually created, it wasn’t widely available so radio would serve as entertainment for many and radio shows would serve as movies or television shows for the mind. We would get a variety of shows covering a variety of genres that would later influence a number of properties from Batman to Tales From The Crypt to others. Such shows would introduce us to many beloved Pulp Heroes from The Green Hornet, The Shadow depending on who you ask, and the next character and costume on this list, The Lone Ranger!!!
Created by Fran Striker and George W. Trendle, The Lone Ranger debuted on January 31st 1933 on WXYZ radio. The Lone Ranger tells the tale of a Texas Ranger named John Reid who after surviving an ambush from the Cavendish Gang, leaves him the lone survivor of his Texas Ranger party. John is nursed back to health thanks to his faithful Native American friend Tonto and after burying his fellow fallen rangers and making a mask out of his late brother’s vest, dons the persona known as The Lone Ranger and starts a new journey of apprehending his brother’s killers and bringing Justice and Order to the Wild West. The Lone Ranger was ahead of it’s time with it’s themes of tolerance and Justice for all and featuring an actual Native American for the role of Tonto. Not only this but unlike his other Pulp Brethren, The Lone Ranger would never kill. While The Lone Ranger would enjoy his popularity through the radio show, it wasn’t until September 15th 1949 when most people would be introduced to the character thanks to the television show of the same name played by the legendary Clayton Moore.
I’m a big fan of the character and I’m a BIG fan of his comics, specifically Dynamite Entertainment’s 2006 comic book series written by Brett Matthews and Sergio Cariello. These are some of my favorite comics in recent years and I HIGHLY recommend them to fans of comics, pulp heroes, and westerns.
So when 2016 came along and after getting excited for the crossover between the Lone Ranger and Green Hornet, I decided to flex my creativity muscles and go as The Lone Ranger. For The Lone Ranger, I used one of the comic covers as reference. Then what I did next was get an accessory kit online from Party City that featured the hat, the mask, Ranger badge, and the ascot. Then I went to my local Burlington’s and looked for a light blue dress shirt. Finally I used a pair of black dress pants and VOLIÀ! A simple small budget cosplay that turned into one of my favorite costumes. I didn’t get any fake guns or holsters as I didn’t want to go over budget but suffice to say, I did a good job with what I was limited with.
Finally we go to my final favorite Halloween Costume, Zorro. Zorro’s first appearance would be in the Pulp Magazine “All-Story Weekly” in August 1919 and the story would be called “The Curse of Capistrano” later retitled as “The Mark Of Zorro” and was written by Johnston McCulley. Zorro is the swashbuckling Pulp Hero who’s influenced everything from The Lone Ranger to The Shadow to Lee Falk’s The Phantom to most famously Batman, to the point that whenever you see Batman’s origin story, the movie the Waynes went to see prior to their murder is almost always Zorro related, specifically the two versions of the Mark of Zorro.
Zorro is another favorite pulp hero of mine as I love his adventures and his character with how confident and cocky he is, I think of him as trolling his enemies and that always makes me laugh. I also like the lore and story behind the character and his various incarnations from the original novel to what Matt Wagner did when he adapted Isabel Allende’s novel into comic book form.
The character of Zorro has been adapted many times and various generations will have their pick for their version of Zorro. From the silent films, to the serials, to Guy Williams’ legendary Disney series to New World’s Zorro series to Antonio Banderas’ Mask of Zorro which would later serve as the inspiration for Puss In Boots, Zorro has enjoyed a long lineage and longevity that continues to this day with future Zorro projects on the horizon. I myself am a fan of both Guy Williams’ Zorro as well as the Duncan Regehr’s depiction of Zorro. These are my favorite versions of Zorro though I am also a fan of the other versions as well, especially Banderas’ version. However I’m also a big fan of the comics, specifically the Matt Wagner’s comics from Dynamite Entertainment and after re-reading them, they inspired me to do Zorro as my next Halloween costume back in 2018. Unlike the other costumes mentioned, this time I actually bought the costume instead of doing it as a budgeted cosplay and while it’s not the best looking costume, I’m really happy with how it looked and I had a lot of fun wearing it. I did a specific pose based off of a cover from the Dynamite Entertainment comic series and I loved it. I have a funny story involving the costume too but that’s a story saved for friends for another time.
I really enjoyed all these costumes as it helped me flex my creativity muscles and think up creative ideas on how to bring these characters to life. It also gave me the confidence needed to eventually do some cosplay work when the time arises and I have the time and money to do it. One day I intend on covering these characters in more depth and it’s something I’m looking forward in doing.
So what’s your favorite recent Halloween costume? Name a Pulp Hero you really like. What creative solutions have you done for a costume/cosplay and what’s a character you would like to cosplay as?
Let me know in the comments and as always, don’t forget to like and share this post and like and follow the page as well as check my other posts for the month of October, in which I do a post for each day in preparation for Halloween.
